Friday, June 26, 2015

Garden update - Late June 2015

So moving sort of messed up my plan to have a huge food garden this year! I moved everything that was still alive to my sister's back porch, emptied and reclaimed the dirt from everything that wasn't still alive, and set up along the fence.

And then this whole last two weeks of violently high temperatures happened. Like, over 100 for days at a time! Of course with the change of lighting situations and the sudden new heat, a lot of the plants are stressed or dead now--almost all the tomatoes, the one squash that survived the bugs, all the peas, my baby natal plums and all my citruses, etc.

So I took all these pictures and put this horrible yellow filter on them so you can have some idea of how hot and blinding everything is...

But it's not all bad news!

The Pawpaws sprouted! A few look a little chewed on or burned, but it looks like all ten of the seeds sprouted! I'm so excited! They're supposed to be finnicky little things, and they apparently don't like repotting, but with so many sprouts, maybe one or two will live til tree-hood, and I can add them to my mobile orchard!

My baby Danish Strand Rose is doing amazingly well. I should probably cut that top off it now, but I think I'll leave it to preserve the little microclimate it still has in there, and to keep the bugs off. I planted like ten, and I think only one sprouted, but it looks like a feisty one!

Osage oranges! A2 says that I don't need them to keep spiders away because "there's no spiders in this town, only in cartoons", but I'm still happy they're doing so well! Yay native plants doing well in my sad little garden!

My one little tomato that survived. I planted multiple seeds of like ten different sorts of tomatoes, and the sharpie all weathered off long before I had to rearrange and move the whole thing, so who knows which one it is. I'm hoping it's one of my fancy-colored ones, since those seeds were sort of expensive and rare, but I'd be happy if it turns out to be like a Cherokee Purple or a Brandywine from that heirloom mix.

I repotted it today to give it more space, and it's a little pale but seems to be good and strong, so I'll just baby it and see if it'll flower. There's lots and lots of bees and plant-busy wasps around here (I'm trying to get them used to me so that I can "tame" them), so I don't think pollination will be an issue.

My jade plant--the one given to me by Emmy's mom like 15 years ago--is loving the heat, which is great, because that thing is fragile and snaps off whole branches when it's unhappy. And look at how big and fuzzy that asparagus is! I planted it, like, barely after the snow and in (as you can see) less than an ideal location, but as soon as it got hot, it started sending up shoots and is the only thing that really seems to have loved all this sun and heat! It's way too young and cramped to be food yet, but I'll just tote it around until I can harvest off it. And replant the crowns separately this fall after they go to sleep.

One little pepper! I think I only planted Datils, Aji Dulce and Lemon Peppers in the seed starter, so it should be one of those. I can't remember which was in that spot and my gardening journal wound up packed somewhere. I'm sad that more didn't come up! Datils come from my old home town of St Augustine, exclusively, and the weather is basically the same here so I had hoped they'd thrive and I could get some. Aji Dulce are native to Cuba, like my gramma. And Lemon Peppers were a gift in a seed swap.

Here's what was the core of my old garden; sad looking now! Not pictured here, though, is my badly-scorched crabapple, and I think my hawthorn and crepe myrtles died. Really, it was a bad spring for my orchard; I'm gonna have to replant all of that.

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